Going back to the Understanding Civil 3D elements section in Chapter 1, Introduction to Civil 3D, we were essentially looking at a high-level overview of the resulting major modeled components. In this section, we’ll take a deeper dive into the main hub for accessing and customizing Civil 3D’s objects to get a clear understanding of how all the different pieces within our drawings come together.

When we look at our Toolspace, you will notice four main tabs along the right side of the box (refer to Figure 2.1). These four tabs include Prospector at the top, Settings just below that, then Survey, and finally Toolbox at the very bottom:

Figure 2.1 – Toolspace

When the Toolspace is first displayed, the Prospector view will automatically be displayed right away. A quick note that Civil 3D remembers which tab was displayed prior to closing your previous session, so the default tab that is displayed the...